Abstract
Background: Breast cancer (BC) is one of the highest incidence rates in Lebanon. Previous studies had focused scarcely on the unconscious protective shield of patients with BC or BC survivors against cancer, while only some studies had focused on the relationship between defense mechanisms (DMs) and high adaptation with the disease process and progress. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the reaction of inpatients with BC toward the disease by measuring DMs in the Lebanon context.Methods: Seventy inpatients with BC were recruited randomly from six hospitals. Their DMs were measured using the Defense Mechanism Rating Scale. Moreover, the Relationship Anecdotes Paradigm (RAP) was used with three recent life vignettes of initial diagnosis, family, and daily life. The data were analyzed using repeated measure ANOVA, Wilcoxon rank-sum test, and Spearman's rank.Results: Patients with stage 2 BC used more high-adaptive defense levels than patients with stage 4 BC who used more minor image distorting defense levels. Moreover, patients with stage 2 BC used more self-observation and undoing, while patients with stage 4 BC used more devaluation.Conclusion: The severity of BC, the age of carriers, and the social status may lead to higher use of DMs, at the level of the individual defense and the hierarchal or the tripartite levels.
Highlights
Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide [World Health Organization (WHO), 2020a]
The severity of breast cancer (BC), the age of carriers, and the social status may lead to higher use of defense mechanisms (DMs), at the level of the individual defense and the hierarchal or the tripartite levels
The distribution of defenses used at least once and the mean magnitude of defenses is similar between stages 2 and 4, patients with more developed cancer stage used lower adaptive DMs
Summary
Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide [World Health Organization (WHO), 2020a]. In Lebanon, cancer was merely responsible for 16% of death in 2016, and breast cancer (BC) was the one with the highest incidence cancer rates. There were 17,294 new cancer cases in Lebanon in 2018, of which BC accounted for 18.6% of these new cases and had the highest new incidence rate in women with 37.9% [World Health Organization (WHO), 2020b]. Previous studies showed that patients with BC have high anxiety and depression levels and the anxiety was associated with physical burdens (Park et al, 2018), women patients with BC were shown to have higher resilience and mood repair levels than women with non-BC (Guil et al, 2020). Breast cancer (BC) is one of the highest incidence rates in Lebanon. This study aimed to investigate the reaction of inpatients with BC toward the disease by measuring DMs in the Lebanon context
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